The Consumers’ Foundation yesterday accused Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) of turning a blind eye to unreasonable housing policies, such as counting the area covered by a canopy roof as part of the property area.
The consumer rights watchdog had previously attacked real estate brokers and construction companies for inflating the advertised surface area of a property during the selling process.
The group said the surface area should be calculated according to the size of the area contained inside the outer walls, rather than starting at the middle point of the outer walls, as stipulated by the Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency, or the outermost border of the outer walls as stipulated by the ministry’s Department of Land Administration.
Other tricks property sellers often use to fool home buyers include counting the area taken up by pillars, rain shutters, balconies, emergency escapes and ladders, parking spaces and power and other utility installations, the foundation said.
Foundation chairman Hsieh Tien-jen (謝天仁) said that a 50 ping (165.3m²) property can be inflated by an additional 1.5 ping if realtors count the area covered by canopy roofs, which could hike the property’s price by as much as NT$1.35 million (US$40,000) if the property is located in Taipei City’s Da-an District (大安).
Hsieh said the Control Yuan had censured the Ministry of the Interior on Sept. 3 last year for failing to promptly revise building registration regulations, but that it should now censure the Cabinet for failing to improve the situation.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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